Every child learns at school that the Black Death was spread by rats which carried infected fleas. But the textbooks may need to be changed, as a new study suggests rodents have been unfairly blamed for the plague which killed millions of people across medieval Europe. The Black Death, it appears, may not have been spread by filthy rats, but by lice and fleas carried by humans instead.
Researchers from Oslo University created a mathematical model for how people would have died if rats were the villains. But the death rates in nine European cities including London fail to match. If fleas from rats spread the bubonic plague, experts would expect to see a few people dying at first. Then the numbers would spike, as plague-infected rats carrying the parasites died off and their fleas made the jump to humans. Instead the death records suggest the great unwashed may have fueled the Black Death’s spread. Most people would have had their own fleas and lice, when the plague arrived in Europe on 1346, because they bathed much less often.
Computational biologist Boris Schmid, from the center for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis at the University of Oslo, said: ‘For seven out of nine medieval cities, the model that could best describe medieval plague outbreaks was the one assuming that human ectoparasites – human fleas and body lice – were the main way in which the plague spread.
‘Even assuming one rat for every person in medieval cities, which was probably 10 times the actual number of rats, the death rates did not fit.’ The Black Death of 1348 famously killed half of the people in London within 18 months, with bodies piled five-deep in mass graves. When the Great Plague of 1665 hit, a fifth of people in London died, with victims shut in their homes and a red cross painted on the door with the words ‘Lord have mercy upon us’. The pandemic spread from Europe through the 14th and 19th centuries – thought to come from fleas which fed on infected rats before biting humans and passing the bacteria to them.
But modern experts challenge the dominant view that rats caused the incurable disease. Experts point out that rats were not that common in northern Europe, which was hit equally hard by plague as the rest of Europe, and that the plague spread faster than humans might have been exposed to their fleas. The Norwegian researchers, who also created a mathematical model for human fleas and lice, found their graph of mortality rates came closer to the deaths recorded in articles and government reports from the time. This would have spread the plague much more efficiently as people sleeping in the same beds would have been bitten by the same fleas and lice.
Professor Mark Bailey, a historian and Black Death expert from the University of East Anglia, said: ‘It was only less than a decade ago that scientists and historians accepted that the Black Death was definitively a version of the plague – albeit a variant form of the bacterium acting differently to the plague today.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5271841/Rats-NOT-blame-Europes-Black-
If you still believe in the fraudulent germ theory, the above might make sense to you, however, since the terrain theory is the far more plausible theory and has far more proof and validity, the below may make more sense.
Was the Black Plague Really the Result of Jews Poisoning Christians Wells?
By the fall of 1348 the rumor was current that these deaths were due to an international conspiracy of Jewry to poison Christendom. It was reported that the leaders in the Jewish metropolis of Toledo had initiated the plot and that one of the chief conspirators was a Rabbi Peyret who had his headquarters in Chambéry, Savoy, whence he dispatched his poisoners to France, Switzerland, and Italy.
By authority of Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy, a number of the Jews who lived on the shores of Lake Geneva, having been arrested and tried, confessed to their inquisitors. These Jews, under torture (according to the Jewish Encyclopedia), incriminated others. Records of their confessions were sent from one town to another in Switzerland and down the Rhine River into Germany, and as a result, thousands of Jews, in at least two hundred towns and hamlets, were butchered and burnt. The sheer loss of numbers, the disappearance of their wealth, and the growing hatred of the Christians brought German Jewry to a catastrophic downfall. It now began to decline and did not again play an important part in German life till the seventeenth century.
The first account that follows is a translation from the Latin of a confession made by Agimet, a Jew, who was arrested at Chatel, on Lake Geneva. It is typical of the confessions extorted and forwarded to other towns. The confession of Agimet is found in the Appendix to Johann S. Schilter’s 1698 edition of the Middle High German chronicle of the Strasbourg historian, Jacob von Königshofen (1346-1420).
The second account describes the Black Death in general and treats specifically of the destruction of the Jewish community in Strasbourg. In this city the some authorities attempted to excuse the Jews, but were overthrown by a fear-stricken mob led by the butchers’ and tanners’ guilds. This selection is taken from the body of Königshofen’s history. This account merits credence, not only because K6nigshofen was an archivist and lived close to the events of which he writes, but also because he incorporated considerable material from his Strasbourg predecessor, the historian F. Closener, who was probably an eyewitness of the tragedy. The third selection is an epitaph of an otherwise unknown Jew who died a victim of the plague in 1349. Obviously, Jews, too, were not spared by this dread disease. The epitaph in the original Hebrew is in poetical form.
The charge of well poisoning was not altogether unprecedented; it had already cropped up in three places (1308 in the Vaud; 1316 in the Eulenburg region; and 1319 in Franconia) prior to the first really serious incident.
In 1321 the lepers of France were accused of harboring the same design and suffered widespread persecution, but it shortly appeared that they were little more than agents and that the Jews had been the responsible entrepreneurs behind the scheme. One report has it that a Hebrew letter found in Parthenay in 1321 and translated by a ‘converted’ Jew was said to reveal a huge plot of the Jews, the lepers, and the Saracens of Spain to destroy the whole Christian population of Europe by poisoning the wells.
Evidently little credence was placed in these tales, for an edict issued June 21, 1321, directed the arrest and punishment of the lepers involved, without mentioning Jews. However, the incident could not be left wholly unexploited: it would appear that the Parlement of Paris, the King’s highest court, exacted a large fine from the Jews of France in consequence of these reports, and the following year Charles IV, having mulcted them of most of their possessions (Jews bribed the king), expelled them from France for their alleged complicity in the plot.
A sixteenth century chronicler, Johannes Aventin, records that in 1337 the Jews had planned to poison the entire Christian population of Germany but their plan had miscarried. A sixteenth-century report has it that in 1348 (year of the Black Death) the Jews held a meeting at Benfeld in Alsace, “as they later confessed,” and there hatched a plot to poison all the wells in Germany “from the German Sea to the Italian (welsch) mountains.”
The ‘plague’ which swept across Europe in the late 1340s seemed to contemporaries to herald the end of the world. To the chroniclers of Padua the plague was a devastation more final than Noah’s Flood – when God had left some people alive to continue the human race. On the other side of Europe, in Kilkenny, John Clynn left blank pages at the end of his chronicle ‘in case anyone should still be alive in the future.’
“In Genoa and Venice, every city, every settlement, every place was poisoned by the contagious pestilence, and their inhabitants, both men and women, died suddenly. And when one person had contracted the illness, he poisoned his whole family even as he fell and died, so that those preparing to bury his body were seized by death in the same way. Thus death entered through the windows, and as cities and towns were depopulated their inhabitants mourned their dead neighbours.
Almost everyone who had been in the East, or in the regions to the south and north, fell victim to sudden death after contracting this pestilential disease, as if struck by a lethal arrow which raised a tumor on their bodies. The scale of the mortality and the form which it took persuaded those who lived, weeping and lamenting, through the bitter events that the last judgement had come. Mass funerals had to be held and there was not enough room to bury the growing numbers of dead. Priests and doctors, upon whom most of the care of the sick devolved, had their hands full in visiting the sick and, alas, by the time they left they too had been infected & followed the dead immediately to the grave.
No prayer, trumpet or bell summoned friends & neighbors to the funeral, nor was mass performed. Degraded & poverty-striken wretches were paid to carry the great & noble to burial, For the social equals of the dead person dared not attend the funeral for fear of being struck down themselves. Men were borne to burial by day and night, since needs must, and with only a short service. In many cases the houses of the dead had to be shut up, for no one dared enter them or touch the belongings of the dead. No one knew what to do.
Those of both sexes who were in health, and in no fear of death, were struck by four savage blows to the flesh. First, out of the blue, a kind of chilly stiffness troubled their bodies. They felt a tingling sensation, as if they were being pricked by the points of arrows. The next stage was a fearsome attack which took the form of an extremely hard, solid boil. In some people this developed under the armpit and in others in the groin between the scrotum and the body. As it grew more solid, its burning heat caused the patients to fall into an acute and putrid fever, with severe headaches. As it intensified its extreme bitterness could have various effects.
In some cases it gave rise to an intolerable stench. In others it brought vomiting of blood, or swellings near the place from which the corrupt humour arose: on the back, across the chest, near the thigh. Some people lay as if in a drunken stupor and could not be roused. Some died on the very day the illness took possession of them others on the next day, others – the majority – between the third and fifth day. There was no known remedy for the vomiting of blood. Those who fell into a coma, or suffered a swelling or the stink of corruption very rarely escaped. But from the fever it was sometimes possible to make a recovery.
At all events, few of those who caught it ever recovered, and in most cases death occurred within three days from the appearance of the symptoms we have described, some people dying more rapidly than others, the majority without any fever or other complications.
Theories and accusations were made against a number of different people, but the most frequent were made against the Jews. Local officials exchanged details of Jewish enormities in their districts, and of confessions extorted under light torture, creating an atmosphere in which each piece of evidence fired men to hunt out more offenders.
“In 1349 Jews were seized and put in chains and into prison every- where, in all the places where they dwelt. The reason for this was a strong suspicion that they planned to destroy the Christians by means of poison, and that they had secretly put poison into wells, springs and rivers so that Christians would drink it. And the common report was that they had done this in various places. For there were some among the Jews who were cunning and learned astrologers and they had forecast the impending mortality from the course of the stars, and this encouraged them to put their evil intention into practice with more confidence and cunning.
They also saw by the course of the stars that a religious sect was to be destroyed (and they hoped that this meant the Christians) and that men bearing red crosses would appear (and they were unsure whether this meant their sect would then be destroyed); and they said many other things which it would take too long to relate here.”
In Bern and Freyburg, in January, 1349, many Jews confessed themselves guilty of the crime imputed to them; and it being affirmed that poison had in fact been found in a well at Zoffingen.
In Germany especially, the springs and wells were built over, that nobody might drink of them, or employ their contents for culinary purposes; and for a long time, the inhabitants of numerous towns and villages used only river and rain water. The city gates were also guarded with the greatest caution: only confidential persons were admitted; and if medicine, or any other article, which might be supposed to be poisonous, was found in the possession of a stranger – and it was natural that some should have these things by them for their private use, he was forced to swallow a portion of it.
Solemn summonses were issued from Bern to the towns of Basle, Freyburg in Breisgau, & Strasburg, to pursue the Jews as poisoners. The Burgo masters and Senators opposed this requisition; but in Basle the populace obliged them to bind themselves by an oath to burn the Jews, & to forbid persons of that community from entering their city, for the space of two hundred years.
It was reported in all Europe, that they were in connection with secret superiors in Toledo, to whose decrees they were subject, and from whom they had received commands respecting the coining of base money, poisoning, the murder of Christian children, etc..; that they received the poison by sea from remote parts, and also prepared it themselves from spiders, owls, and other venomous animals; but, in order that their secret might not be discovered, that it was known only to their Rabbis and rich men.
After the confessions of the first Jews in Switzerland, light torture extorted similar ones in various places. Some acknowledged having received poisonous powder in bags, & injunctions from Toledo, by secret messengers. Bags of this description were also often found in wells.
To the Honorable the Mayor, Senate, and Citizens of the City of Strasburg, the Castellan of Chillon, Deputy of the Bailiff of Chablais, sendeth greeting with all due submission and respect.
Understanding that you desire to be made acquainted with the confession of the Jews, and the proofs brought forward against them, I certify, by these presents, to you, and each of you that desires to be informed, that they of Berne have had a copy of the inquisition and confession of the Jews who lately resided in the places specified, and who were accused of putting poison into the wells and several other places: as also the most conclusive evidence of the truth of the charge preferred against them.
Many Jews were put to the question, others being excused from it, because they confessed, & were brought to trial & burnt. Several Christians (Conversos) also who had poison given them by the Jews for the purpose of destroying the Christians, were put on the wheel & tortured.
This burning of the Jews and torturing of the said Christians [Conversos] took place in many parts of the county of Savoy.
Fare you well.
The Confession made on the 15TH day of September, year of our Lord 1348, in the Castle of Chillon, by the Jews arrested in Neustadt, on the charge of Poisoning the Wells, Springs, & other places; also Food, etc., with the design of destroying & extirpating all Christians.
Balavignus, a Jewish physician, inhabitant of Thonon, was arrested at Chillon in consequence of being found in the neighborhood. He was put for a short time to the rack, and on being taken down, confessed, after much hesitation, that, about ten weeks before, the Rabbi Jacob of Toledo, who, because of a citation, had resided at Chamberi since Easter, sent him, by a Jewish boy, some poison in the mummy of an egg: it was a powder sewed up in a thin leathern pouch accompanied by a letter, commanding him on penalty of excommunication,and by his required obedience to the law, to throw this poison into the larger and more frequented wells of the town of Thonon, to poison those who drew water there.
He was further enjoined not to communicate the circumstance to any person whatever, under the same penalty. In conformity with this command of the Jewish rabbis and doctors of the law, he, Balavignus, distributed the poison in several places, and acknowledged having one evening placed a certain portion under a stone in a spring on the shore at Thonon.
He further confessed that the said boy brought various letters of a similar import, addressed to others of his nation, and particularly specified some directed severally to Mossoiet, Banditon, and Samoleto, of Neustadt; to Musseo Abramo and Aquetus of Montreantz,
Several letters of a like nature were sent to Abram and Musset, Jews at Moncheoli ; and the boy told him that he had taken many others to different and distant places, but he did not recollect to whom they were addressed. Balavignus further confessed that, after having put the poison into the spring at Thonon, he had positively forbidden his wife and children to drink the water, but had not thought fit to assign a reason. He avowed the truth of this statement, and in the presence of several credible witnesses, swore by his Law, and the Five Books of Moses, to every item of his deposition.
On the day following, Balavignus, voluntarily and without torture, ratified, the above confession verbatim before many persons of character, and, of his own accord, acknowledged that on returning one day from Tour near Vivey, he had thrown into a well below Mustruez, namely, that of La Conerayde, a quantity of the poison tied up in a rag, given to him for the purpose by Aquetus of Montreantz, an inhabitant of the said Tour: that he had acquainted Manssiono, and his son Delosaz, residents of Neustadt, with the circumstance of his having done so.
He described the color of the poison as being red and black. On the nineteenth day of September, the above-named Balavignus confessed, without torture, that about three weeks after Whitsuntide, a Jew named Mussus told him that he had thrown poison into the well, in the custom-house of that place, the property of the Borneller family & that he no longer drank the water of this well, but that of the lake. He further deposed that Mussus informed him that he had also laid some of the poison under the stones in the custom house at Chillon.
Search was accordingly made in this well, and the poison found: some of it was given to a Jew by way of trial, and he died in consequence. He also stated that the rabbis had ordered him and other Jews to refrain from drinking of the water for nine days after the poison was infused into it; & immediately on having poisoned the waters, he communicated the circumstance to the other Jews.
He, Balavignus, confessed that about two months previously, being at Evian, he had some conversation on the subject with a Jew called Jacob, and was answered in the affirmative; he then questioned him whether he had obeyed the command, and Jacob replied that he had not, but had given the poison to Savetus, a Jew, who had thrown it into the well de Morer at Evian.
Jacob also desired him, Balavignus, to execute the command imposed on him with due caution. He confessed that Aquetus of Montreantz had informed him that he had thrown some of the poison into the well above Tour, the water of which he sometimes drank.
He confessed that Samolet had told him that he had laid the poison which he had received in a well, which, however, he refused to name to him. Balavignus, as a physician, further deposed that a person infected by such poison coming in contact with another while in a state of perspiration, infection would be the almost inevitable result; as might also happen from the breath of an infected person. This fact he believed to be correct, and was confirmed in his opinion by the attestation of many experienced physicians.
He also declared that none of his community could exculpate themselves from this accusation, as the plot was communicated to all; and that all were guilty of the above charges. Balavignus was conveyed over the lake from Chillon to Clarens, to point out the well into which he confessed having thrown the powder. On landing, he was conducted to the spot; and, having seen the well, acknowledged that to be the place, saying, “This is the well into which I put the poison.”
he well was examined in his presence, and the linen cloth in which the poison had been wrapped was found in the waste-pipe by a notary-public named Heinrich Gerhard, in the presence of many persons, and was shown to the said Jew.
He acknowledged this to be the linen which had contained the poison, which he described as being of two colors, red and black, but said that he had thrown it into the open well. The linen cloth was taken away and is preserved.
Balavignus, in conclusion, attests the truth of all and everything as above related. He believes this poison to contain a portion of the basilisk, because he had heard, and felt assured, that the above poison could not be prepared without it.
Banditono, a Jew of Neustadt, was, on the fifteenth day of September, subjected for a short time to the torture. After a long interval, he confessed having cast a quantity of poison, about the size of a large nut, given him by Musseus, a Jew, at Tour, near Vivey, into the well of Carutet, in order to poison those who drank of it. The following day, Banditono, voluntarily and without torture, attested the truth of the aforesaid deposition and also confessed that the Rabbi Jacob von Pasche, who came from Toledo and had settled at Chamberi, sent him, at Pilliex, by a Jewish servant, some poison about the size of a large nut, together with a letter, directing him to throw the powder into the wells on pain of excommunication.
He had therefore thrown the poison, which was sewn up in a leathern bag, into the well of Cercliti de Roch; further, also, that he saw many other letters in the hands of the servant addressed to different Jews: that he had also seen the said servant deliver one on the outside of the upper gate, to Samuletus, the Jew, at Neustadt. He stated, also, that the Jew, Massolet, had informed him that he had put poison into the well near the bridge at Vivey.III. The said Manssiono, Jew of Neustadt, was put upon the rack on the fifteenth day of the same month, but refused to admit the above charge, protesting his entire ignorance of the whole matter, but the day following, he, voluntarily and without any torture, confessed, in the presence of many persons, that he came from Mancheolo one day in last Whitsun week, in company with a Jew named Provenzal, and, on reaching the well of Chabloz Criiez between Vyona and Mura, the latter said, “You must put some of the poison which I will give you into that well, or woe betide you!”
He therefore took a portion of the powder about the bigness of a nut, and did as he was directed. He believed that the Jews in the neighborhood of Evian had convened a council among themselves relative to this plot, before Whitsuntide.
He further said that Balavignus had informed him of his having poisoned the well de la Conerayde below Mustruez. He also affirmed his conviction of the culpability of the Jews in this affair, < stating that they were fully acquainted with all the particulars, and guilty of the alleged crime.
On the third day of the October following, Manssiono was brought before the commissioners, and did not in the least vary from his former deposition, or deny having put the poison into the said wells.
The above-named Jews, prior to their execution, solemnly swore by their Law to the truth of their several depositions, & declared that all Jews whatsoever, from 7 years old & upward, could not be exempted from the charge of guilt, as all of them were acquainted with the plot,and more or less participators in the crime.
The seven other examinations scarcely differ from the above, except in the names of the accused, and afford but little variety. We will, therefore, only add a characteristic passage at the conclusion of this document.
The whole speaks for itself.
There still remain NUMEROUS PROOFS and accusations against the above mentioned Jews: also against Jews and Christians (Conversos) in different parts of the county of Savoy, who have already received the punishment due to their heinous crime,which, however, I have not at hand, and cannot therefore send you.
I must add, that all the Jews of Neustadt were burnt according to the just sentence of the law. At Augst, I was present when three Christians were flayed on account of being accessory to the plot of poisoning.
Christians became even more convinced of the Jews’ guilt because it was only non-Jews who were dying.
Jews tried to blame the lack of Jewish deaths on hygiene, claiming that they practiced cleanliness while Christians did not.
The Confession of Agimet of Geneva, Châtel, October 20, 1348
The year of our Lord 1348.
On Friday, the 10th of the month of October, at Châtel, in the castle thereof, there occurred the judicial inquiry which was made by order of the court of the illustrious Prince, our lord, Amadeus, Count of Savoy, and his subjects against the Jews of both sexes who were there imprisoned, each one separately.
This was done after public rumor had become current and a strong clamor had arisen because of the poison put by them into the wells, springs, and other things which the Christians use-demanding that they die, that they are able to be found guilty and, therefore, that they should be punished. Hence this their confession made in the presence of a great many trustworthy persons. Agimet the Jew, who lived at Geneva and was arrested at Châtel, was there put to the torture a little and then he was released from it.
And after a long time, having been subjected again to torture a little, he confessed in the presence of a great many trustworthy persons, who are later mentioned. To begin with it is clear that at the Lent just passed Pultus Clesis de Ranz had sent this very Jew to Venice to buy silks and other things for him. When this came to the notice of Rabbi Peyret, a Jew of Chamb6ry who was a teacher of their law, he sent for this Agimet, for whom he had searched, and when he had come before him he said:
“We have been informed that you are going to Venice to buy silk and other wares. Here I am giving you a little package of half a span in size which contains some prepared poison and venom in a thin, sewed leather-bag. Distribute it among the wells, cisterns,and springs about Venice and the other places to which you go, in order to poison the people who use the water of the aforesaid wells that will have been poisoned by you, namely, the wells in which the poison will have been placed.”
Agimet took this package full of poison and carried it with him to Venice, & when he came there he threw & scattered a portion of it into the well or cistern of fresh water which was there near the German House, in order to poison the people who use the water of that cistern.
And he says that this is the only cistern of sweet water in the city. He also says that the mentioned Rabbi Peyret promised to give him whatever he wanted for his troubles in this business. Of his own accord Agimet confessed further that after this had been done he left at once in order that he should not be captured by the citizens or others, & that he went personally to Calabria and Apulia & threw the above mentioned poison into many wells. He confesses also that he put some of this poison in the well of the streets of the city of Ballet.
He confesses further that he put some of this poison into the public fountain of the city of Toulouse and in the wells that are near the [Mediterranean] sea. Asked if at the time that he scattered the venom and poisoned the wells, above mentioned, any people had died, he said that he did not know inasmuch as he had left everyone of the above mentioned places in a hurry. Asked if any of the Jews of those places were guilty in the above mentioned matter, he answered that he did not know.
And now by all that which is contained in the five books of Moses and the scroll of the Jews, he declared that this was true, and that he was in no wise lying, no matter what might happen to him.
A Jewish apologetic book containing some of the confessions: https://archive.org/download/blackdeathinfour00heck/blackdeathinfour00heck.pdf
